Words on Words – March 2016

March was a month of extremes. Where I live in southern Ontario, we saw weather that hinted at an early summer, followed quickly by one of the worst ice storms in recent memory. American political discourse continues to be dominated by extremists on either end of the spectrum. Christian religions celebrated holy days of extreme sorrow and extreme joy. It is only fitting, then, that each book I read this month was extremely and utterly different than the last. My enjoyment of each was wide and varied as well, and for the first time since I began this project, I found a book hard to finish. But finish I did, as I promised myself I would. The literary world is rich with extremes, and as I explore the space off of my own beaten path, I am discovering new things to love and to forget. From time travel murder mystery to Romantic English poetry to travelogue, nothing I read this month fell into the amorphous middle.

Here are the books I read in March, in order, and the words therein that stayed with me:

#10

“The future is not as loud as war, but it is relentless. It has a terrible fury all its own.” – The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

Lauren Beukes’ The Shining Girls was a tremendously enjoyable read. It is a thumping good time travel story disguised as a murder mystery, and Beukes’ writing is absolutely engrossing. I don’t like to overplay the “couldn’t put it down” narrative, but it was true in this case. As is often the way with time travel stories, there were a few philosophical musings about the nature of time and the future, fate and free will; unlike many authors, though, Beukes does not come across as desperate or bumbling as she weaves these deeper ideas into her prose. She simply tells her story well, and lets the more profound observations come about naturally.

Such is the case with the quotation above. It is eloquent and beautiful in its simplicity. The terrible, cacophonous uncertainty of war is a tension I am fortunate not to have to worry about every day. But there is another cacophony which is constantly near me; it is the sound of all my possible futures colliding and coming apart, redefined in each moment of my present. It is always there, always changing, full of threat and promise.

#11

“That’s how things were out here in the wild, she was learning. Dangerous or beautiful. Or both.” – Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

It took a while for me to get into Uglies. As I have written on this blog before, there is a saturation of dystopian fiction among Young Adult novels. Some of these are worse and some better than Uglies. It probably took me until half way through the book to buy into the world that Westerfeld was building, but I am glad I stuck with it because it certainly got stronger as it progressed. It is a good alternative for any teacher to suggest you young teens when they don’t want to read another report on The Hunger Games, but it does not do anything that that book and a hundred others have not done. The novel is the first of a series of four; it depicts a world in which all conflict and sadness has been eradicated by giving everyone plastic surgery. Predictably, it takes a plucky teenage girl to fight back against the oppressive system and save the day. Despite this less-than-promising premise, however, Uglies has a few redeeming moments of clarity and good writing to reconcile itself to the reader.

The quotation above pretty neatly summarizes the two main theses of the story: that even beautiful things can be destructive, and that there is beauty in the discordant harmony of nature. Nature, and human nature, is rife with imperfection. Dangerously so. But that does not make it any less beautiful. In the same way, beautiful things and beautiful people are not without threat and pain and loss. Not the most life-changing revelation, perhaps, but a quietly important one.

#12

“They went out to the corral to be in the place where there were horses.” – Plainsong by Kent Haruf

Melancholy. That is the word for Kent Haruf’s Plainsong. Melancholy and beautiful. It is a small town story about small town people dealing with small town problems. It is about being good to one another. It is about the ways in which we make communities out of isolation. Haruf’s writing style is plain and straightforward. It is as efficient as any writing I have ever read; there is not one wasted word nor punctuation mark to be found. Yet in his exceedingly simple prose, Haruf finds ways to speak universal truths. He does not need flowery language or heavy metaphor to stir the reader deeply. Sometimes we are kind because we are kind. We help because if we do not, no one will. I wiped a tear away when I read the line above, and I do again writing about it now. Because sometimes you have no deeper motivation for a thing than the thing itself. You do the right thing because it is the right thing to do. Sometimes, in moments of great strife, you go to the corral to be in the place where there are horses.

#13

“Every religion lies. Every moral precept is a delusion. Even the stars are a mirage. The truth is darkness, and the only thing that matters is making a statement before one enters it. Cutting the skin of the world and leaving a scar. That’s all history is, after all: scar tissue.” – Mr Mercedes by Stephen King

I am, as I have said before, a Constant Reader of Stephen King. I have also said that I believe he is the greatest living storyteller. In Mr Mercedes, he has written more of a procedural crime drama than his standard fantasy/horror fare, but the trademark excellence is still out in full force. It was a tense and gripping read, made even more so by a truly detestable villain. The antagonist, Brady Hartsfield, is creepy and vile in an almost-too-real way, while also being uncomfortably recognizable. The quotation above is an example of his thinking; it is a perverse and horrible way to think about the world, but have we not all thought that way from time to time? That we may never leave a mark unless it is a scar? That we may never be remembered except for the wrongs we do? That the world is set against us, and the only way we can control our own fate is to break? Thankfully, most of us only think that way in our darkest moments. But in typical Stephen King fashion, the scariest thing to confront is the worst version of yourself.

#14

“My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought,

As if life’s business were a summer mood;

As if all needful things would come unsought

To genial faith, still rich in genial good;

But how can He expect that others should

Build for him, sow for him, and at his call

Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?” – Resolution and Independence VI by William Wordsworth

If there is one thing I regret about the incredibly privileged education which I received growing up, it is the neglect of poetry. I am unspeakably fortunate to have had access to free, safe, comprehensive education delivered by, I am certain, some of the greatest teachers in history. And perhaps the curricula are too full of things which are deemed “useful” or “necessary”, things which students will use to become functioning and productive members of society, to give students a thorough grounding in English Romantic poetry. However, as I have come to appreciate and then to love poetry years later, I cannot help but wonder if I may have come to love it sooner if my exposure to it in school had gone beyond haiku and Shakespeare. What a waste, not to have read Wordsworth until now! But all is not lost – the catch-up has been a delight.

The stanza above, the sixth in a longer poem, begs one of the central questions of our existence: the question of suffering. Why do good people not receive what is surely owed to them for their goodness? Why do bad things happen to the virtuous? If there is a God, why does he not answer my prayers? Wordsworth does not necessarily have an answer, but he preaches a message of perseverance; all each of us can do is weather the storm, doing the things which it is appointed to us to do, and hope. The race is long, and the only way to lose is to stop running. It is a good message beautifully delivered. I am grateful for the length of the race. It means more time for poetry.

#15

“In the time between the two wars, a British colonial officer said that with the invention of the airplane the world has no secrets left. However, he said, there is one last mystery. There is a large country on the Roof of the World, where strange things happen. There are monks who have the ability to separate mind from body, shamans and oracles who make government decisions, and a God-King who lives in a skyscraper-like palace in the Forbidden City of Lhasa.” – Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer

Overall, I found Seven Years In Tibet to be, well, dry. Somewhere near the two-thirds mark, I gave very strong consideration to just putting it down, crossing it off the list, and replacing it with something else. Perhaps something was lost in the translation from Harrer’s native German, or perhaps it is just the way he wrote, but the writing is about as flavourless as any I have ever read. The dull way in which Harrer relays the extraordinary events of his life stands in sharp contrast to the events themselves, and the mysterious and wondrous place in which they happened. He was the first European to truly explore and live in one of the most mysterious places on earth. He spent years tutoring the Dalai Lama. And yet, if you were to judge based on the writing, you would think he was relaying the story of tea with his stuffy Aunt Mildred. Do not misunderstand me – Harrer’s life story is fascinating. It is just that he isn’t very good at making it seem that way.

In 1996, however, he added an epilogue to his book, and it was in this epilogue that he finally hit his stride. It is as if, when he was writing the book with the events fresh in his mind, he was unable to appreciate how incredible they were. Only years later, when he was a much older man, could he look back on that time in his life and see it for the spectacle that it was. The quotation above, I feel, is the proper expression of awe which is owed to that extraordinary story, to Tibet, and to its people.

*****

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